Cut Spelling is a system of English-language spelling reform which reduces redundant letters and makes substitutions to improve correspondence with the spoken word. It was designed by

Christopher Upward Christopher Upward (14 November 1938 – 4 August 2002) was an English orthographer, notable for designing the system of cut spelling, a system of English-language spelling reform which reduces redundant letters and makes substitutions to improve c ...

and was for a time being popularized by the Simplified Spelling Society. The resulting words are 8–15% shorter than standard spellings. The name ''Cut Spelling'' was coined by psychologist

Valerie Yule Valerie Constance Yule (2 January 1929 – 28 January 2021) was an Australian researcher in literacy and imagination, and a clinical child psychologist, academic, school psychologist and teacher, working in disadvantaged schools, Melbourne an ...

. Unlike some other proposed reforms, Cut Spelling does not attempt to make English spelling phonemic, but merely attempts to remove many of the unneeded difficulties of the current spelling. Cut Spelling differs from "traditional orthography" mainly in removing letters from words and makes relatively few substitutions of letters compared with other proposed reforms. According to its designers, this allows readers accustomed to traditional orthography to get used to Cut Spelling fairly quickly and easily, while still giving learners of the language a much-simplified and more systematic spelling system.

Rules

Cut Spelling uses three main reduction rules to convert traditional spellings into "cut spellings": # Letters irrelevant to pronunciation. This rule deletes most silent letters, except when these letters (such as "

magic e In English orthography, many words feature a silent (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent in late Middle En ...

") help indicate pronunciation. Omitting or including the wrong silent letters are common errors. Examples: ''peace'' → ''pece'', ''except'' → ''exept'', ''plaque'' → ''plaq'', ''blood'' → ''blod'', ''pitch'' → ''pich''. # Cutting

unstressed In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...

vowels. English unstressed syllables are usually pronounced with the vowel schwa , which has no standard spelling, but can be represented by any vowel letter. Writing the wrong letter in these syllables is a common error ─ for example, writing ' for ''separate''. Cut Spelling eliminates these vowel letters completely before approximants ( and ) and nasals (, , and ). In addition, some vowel letters are dropped in suffixes, reducing the confusion between ''-able'' and ''-ible''. Examples: ''symbol'' → ''symbl'', ''victim'' → ''victm'', ''lemon'' → ''lemn'', ''glamour/glamor'' → ''glamr'', ''permanent'' → ''permnnt'', ''waited'' → ''waitd'', ''churches'' → ''churchs'', ''warmest'' → ''warmst'', ''edible'' → ''edbl''. # Simplifying doubled consonants. This rule helps with another of the most common spelling errors: failing to double letters (''accommodate'' and ''committee'' are often misspelled) or introducing erroneously doubled letters. Cut Spelling does not eliminate all doubled letters: in some words (especially two-syllable words) the doubled consonant letter is needed to differentiate from another differently pronounced word (e.g., ''holly'' and ''holy''). Examples: ''innate'' → ''inate'', ''necessary'' → ', ''spell'' → ''spel''.

Substitution rules

The Cut Spelling system also uses three substitution rules: # The digraphs ''gh'' and ''ph'' become ''f'' when pronounced . Examples: ''draught'' → ''draft'', ''sulphur'' → ''sulfr'', ''photograph'' → ''fotograf''. # The letter ''g'' is changed to ''j'' when pronounced or . Examples: ''judge'' → ''juj'', ''rouge'' → ''ruje''. # The combinations ''ig'' and ''igh'' are changed to ''y'' when pronounced . Examples: ''flight'' → ''flyt'', ''sign'' → ''syn''. ''The Cut Spelling Handbook'' also lists optional additional rules such as replacing ''ch'' with ''k'' when it makes the sound, respelling as ''y'' unusual patterns that make the diphthong, as well as replacing ''-tion'', ''-cian'', ''-sion'', ''-ssion'', etc. with ''-shn''.

Examples

; Note: The example above assumes British pronunciation by abbreviating "military" to "militry".

References

Sources

* * {{refend

External links